Marc Abrahams's Blog, page 584

Sherlock Holmes and toe loss in lizards

Fuelled with curiosity, some scientists exploit – lovingly, proudly – the investigative trick featured in Arthur Conan Doyle's 1892 story Silver Blaze. There, a baffled police inspector seeks help from the great autodicact/detective Sherlock Holmes:

[Inspector Gregory:] "Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?"

[Holmes:] "To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time."

[Inspector Gregory:] "The dog did nothing in the night-time."

"That was the curious incident," remarked Sherlock Holmes.

Science journals feature many papers in which scientists rely on this technique, riding it to, or at least in the direction of, glory.

You can see that happening in a report called The Mystery of the Missing Toes: Extreme Levels of Natural Mutilation in Island Lizard Populations, published in 2009 in the journal Functional Ecology….

So begins this week's Improbable Research column in The Guardian.

Prof. Nishiyama – #2 – The Zen of clutch maintenance (eggs)

Bearing in mind that the word 'ovoid' means 'egg-shaped', the question : 'Why are eggs ovoid?' has much in common with questions like or 'Why are hearts heart-shaped?' or 'Why are sausages sausage-shaped?' And the Zen-like qualities of the egg-shape question have not escaped professor Yutaka Nishiyama, (Osaka University of Economics, Japan) who decided to approach this enigmatic problem from a mathematical viewpoint in his paper 'The mathematics of egg shape' (Osaka Keidai Ronshu, Vol. 58, Sept. 2007). In which the professor not only developed a formula to describe egg-shapes -

- but also derived a method of visualising how such an ovoid might rest on a flat surface.

"As shown in Figure 2, the gravity force W from the egg's center of mass O, and the reaction force N from the contact point P lie on the same straight line, and the major axis stabilizes with a tilt. I explained this using the terminology of physics, but everyone knows that eggs tilt like this."

This tilt, he explains, means that eggs don't roll nearly as well as spheres do, and instead tend to self-stabilise on gentle slopes. Thus complementing the mathematical focus with a biological / evolutionary one…

For, it's suggested, ovoid eggs may have an advantage over spherical ones (in that they don't roll so well). And thus, species of birds which lay a clutch of eggs on say, gently sloping rocky outcrops, may have a better chance of survival. Either way, the professor urges further investigations in egg-rolling -  using a gently-sloping tabletop, and an un-boiled 'ovoid' egg. "I'd like for those readers who have until now had no interest in the shape of eggs to begin by confirming this experimentally."

Many thanks to Improbable's European Bureau Chief Kees (the Duck Guy) Meoliker who neatly encapsulates some evolutionary aspects:

"Owls and kingfishers lay almost spherical eggs (kingfishers are hole-nesters, owls also use open nests), most species lay pyriform (top-shaped) eggs: such eggs can be closely packed together by arranging the narrow ends to point inward. Species breeding on bare ledges tend to have pointed eggs, the small rolling circle of the egg when knocked being adaptively advantageous."

Also see: A  previous Improbable note regarding professor Nishiyama :  Here

Coming soon:  More research from professor Nishiyama

Adventitious Branching in Liverworts

Today we celebrate adventitious branching in liverworts. Do your part, if you like, by obtaining a copy of the following study, and reading it aloud to a public official:

"Adventitious Branching in Liverworts," David M'Ardle, The Irish Naturalist, vol. 4, no. 4, April 1895, pp. 81-4.

The day Ig Nobel people visited the Karolinska Institute

Yesterday, a bunch of Ig Nobel Prize winners gave a talk at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. Malin Attefall reported about it for SVT Vetenskap. Her report [in Swedish] begins:

En misstänkt ubåt kan vara fisande sillar
Knasforskningens eget Nobelpris besöker Stockholm

Hönor föredrar snygga människor, kissnödiga fattar ibland bra och ibland dåliga beslut och det finns en vetenskaplig förklaring till varför hackspettar aldrig får ont i huvudet. De här upptäckterna har alla belönats med IgNobel-priset. I helgen var prisets grundare i Stockholm för att förklara varför vi inte klarar oss utan den här sortens knasforskning.

I 21 år har Marc Abrahams delat ut priser till upptäckter som först får en att skratta till och sedan tänka efter. Just nu är han på Skandinavienturné och på lördagkvällen besökte han Karolinska Institutet i Solna för att göra reklam för sitt pris och leta efter nya knäppa upptäckter att belöna….

[This photo shows Ig Nobel Prize winners Magnus Wahlberg (left) and HakenWesterberg (right). Marc Abrahams, founder of the Ig Nobel ceremony, is in the middle. Westerberg is carrying a dead herring (not visible in the photo).]

BONUS: This was the first event on the 2012 Ig Nobel Tour of Scandinavia. There will be shows — with a different cast of Ig Nobel characters, in Aarhus on Monday and Tuesday nights, and in Odense on Wednesday night.

Tumbler test: a culinary medical term

The stethoscope [pictured here right] has almost become synonymous with medical practice – it is useful particularly for listening to patients' chests and abdomens.

A perhaps less well known piece of 'medical equipment' is the tumbler (drinking glass) [pictured here below].

Pressing a transparent tumbler against a rash and noting whether the rash fades or not from the tumbler's pressure is known as the tumbler test.

A rash that does not fade – especially in children – can portend serious illness.

Researchers are skeptical about the tumbler test (Mant D, Van den Bruel A. Should we promote the tumbler test? Arch Dis Child, 2011 (7):613-4.)

Here is a brief overview of the controversial tumbler test.

Help! I'm Sweating!

If you like to yell "Help! I'm Sweating", chances are good that you will enjoy at least looking at the book called Help! I'm Sweating.

Dietmar Stattkus wrote it. The book begins with a modest claim:

All information gathered in this book was gathered and carefully checked by the author to the best of his knowledge and ability. Nevertheless, errors in the content cannot be totally excluded.

No one has yet settled the question: Is the English-language edition best, or is the German-language edition (Hilfe, ich schwitze!) best?

BONUS: If you have a strong opinion on this, and wish to express it in the form of a limerick, please write your thought down and send it in. We will select and publish the most stylishly sweaty limerick, quality permitting.

Dahl's drummer control and communication gestures

The images below are from Sofia Dahl's analysis of control gestures and communication gestures in drummers, Dahl is an assistant professor at Aalborg University in Copenhagen. She will perform on the Ig Nobel Tour of Scandinavia, in Aarhus (on Monday and Tuesday, March 27)  and Odense (on Wednesday, March 28) .

Semen Collection and Evaluation in Gorilla gorilla gorilla

A study of particular interest to scholars of semen collection and evaluation in Gorilla gorilla gorilla:

"Semen Collection and Evaluation in Gorilla gorilla gorilla," S.W.J. Seager, D.E. Wildt, N. Schaffer, and C.C. Platz, American Journal of Primatology, vol. 3, supp. 1, 1982, p. 13. [AIR 16:2]

The elusive Lippman and his flatulence on paper

Scicurious writes about "the elusive Lippman" and his fairly famous flatulence study. Here's an excerpt (of the writing about that, not of Lippman's study):

…I searched some more, but no one seemed to have the paper. Finally he and I tracked down the elusive Lippman, who is on the Editorial Board of the Annals of Improbable Research. Given that his 1980 paper was titled "Toward a social psychology of flatulence: the interpersonal regulation of natural gas", I figured this was the right guy….

I was right. Email contact established, Dr. Lippman was kind enough not only to snail mail me the hard copy of the paper (which I will, I promise, scan and produce in PDF for posterity), he also was kind enough to answer many of my questions….

That paper is

Lippman, LG. "Toward a social psychology of flatulence: The interpersonal regulation of natural gas". Psychology: a Quarterly Journal of Human Behavior, 1980.

The story behind this paper is almost as great at the paper itself….

"No-crap craps: crapless craps done right"

For intellectual property enthusiasts:

"No-crap craps: crapless craps done right," US patent application # 2006/0043671 A1, filed August 30, 2004 by Stuart N. Ethier. Here's how Ethier summarizes his innovation:

"Crapless Craps, a game that has existed for more than 20 years, is a modification of standard craps designed to eliminate the possibility of the pass line bettor losing on the come-out roll. However, it has several serious drawbacks that have prevented it from achieving significant popularity with the gambling public. No-Crap Craps is a modification of Crap less Craps created to overcome these shortcomings."